Cricket and free-to-air TV – the full story

From the May issue of SPIN magazine, the UK’s only independent cricket title and, not being owned by Sky like the Wisden Cricketer, the only one able to offer an independent view of the major issues facing the game. For special offers on subscriptions, click this link.

When it comes to cricket’s TV rights debate, there is one key observation that is barely ever expressed, even by ECB chairman Giles Clarke himself. Jamie Clifford, chief executive of Kent, spent seven years working for the Kent Cricket Board, administering those famous grass roots of the game. He believes many discussions of the subject are missing something: “It’s not true that simply showing the game on TV is the best or only marketing tool cricket has,” says Clifford. “It’s a nonsense. You have to go out and explain the game and encourage kids to play it. Kids have to be taught and to have facilities to play it: simply being exposed to it doesn’t develop a love of playing it at all. Yes, some kids will copy what they see on the television but because cricket is a bit more complicated, that’s only half the battle.”
Another county chief executive, KD Smith of Leicestershire, puts more meat on the bones of the ECB’s opposition to government intervention in the TV rights bidding process, as proposed by the recent report by David Davies. “It would be a disaster for English cricket if home Ashes Tests had to be broadcast free-to-view,” Smith tells SPIN. “I’ve seen a few dumb cricketers saying how wonderful it would be, but they won’t think like that if their salaries halve. The amount of money Sky put into the game is huge. It really is a good deal for cricket. In the longer term the hope is that ESPN will challenge for the TV rights and ensure that Sky have someone to bid against. The BBC don’t seem to want cricket. They can’t afford it and they can’t schedule it.
“Cricket at all levels would be hit: women’s cricket; disability cricket; kids’ cricket and first-class cricket. I reckon that about 30 per cent of recreational clubs would disappear. If the Tories get in at the election, the issue will disappear. They’ve bigger fish to fry. My worry is what happens if there is a hung parliament. But even if the report is accepted initially – and I don’t think it will be – there will be an appeal. It almost beggars belief that there was no economic impact report and the ECB – quite rightly – will appeal on those grounds if Labour try and force anything through before the election.”

ECB chairman Giles Clarke’s claims that the grass roots of the game will wither without Sky’s money, however, seem alarmist to many. One high-profile sceptic is Scyld Berry, editor of the Wisden Cricketers Almanack and one of the most authoritative voices in the game. “It needn’t be disastrous for the grass roots or for England teams,” says Berry. “It’s question of how the cake is cut. There’s two main issues. The first is the ECB propaganda: the weeping and lamentation over the prospect of the Sky contract being cancelled, the suggestion that no-one will ever play cricket again: women will never play again, no-one blind will ever touch a ball again… the consequences will be more catastrophic than global warming, if you believe the ECB. I seriously object to that campaign.
“The ECB implies that the first thing to be cut would be development. But there’s no reason why that should be. The ECB spends over twice as much on the professional county game as on the amateur game. If you look at the numbers, it is possible to cut the cake so that the grass roots and the England team aren’t affected and only county cricket is affected. But that debate is yet to be had because the ECB has stopped rational debate over whether county cricket should be so heavily subsidised. Maybe it should be. But let’s have that debate honestly.
For those who are sceptical of the ECB’s warnings of disaster, a key argument is this: if, as the ECB implies, English cricket only survives thanks to Sky money – how did it survive all the way up until Sky came on board in 2006? “By cobbling it together,” says Jamie Clifford. “The cricket-playing population dipped into a very low trough, late ’80s, early 90s: you can see it in the trend for volunteers at clubs: those people in their 30s and 40s who would now, traditionally, be running clubs, don’t exist – they weren’t exposed to the game as teenagers in the ’80s and ’90s. Lots of smaller clubs folded during that period. The game was suffering a slow death through lack of investment.
“But the ECB’s commitment to funding development properly by putting TV money into the grass roots changed everything.
I was involved through that whole transition period. It completely changed the way in which cricket was developed right across the country. Cricket in Kent is unrecognisable now, even compared to 10 years ago, in terms of proper engagement, proper marketing.”
Berry agrees that ECB development money has been beneficial to the amateur game but, when it comes to the crunch, believes role models are more important to the future of the game than new facilities and qualified coaches. “You can always find somewhere to play cricket, with a tennis ball and a piece of wood. That’s the worldwide experience of the game. All that street cricket played in Pakistan and India – is there an ECB development officer in charge of them?
“It’s about role models. Cricket has never been so healthy as it was post-Botham in 1981 or in 2005 during and immediately after the Ashes. So when the ECB say that having as few people as possible watching the game is the healthiest thing for the game because then we get lots of money to go into participation… the polite word for that is ‘counter-intuitive’.”

The ECB’s estimates suggest that 45 per cent of the value of a four-year TV deal is based on Sky being able to show exclusive live coverage of the Ashes: almost as much as the rest of the rights – seven international Test series, all the one-day internationals and T20s and all the domestic tournaments – put together. Based on this calculation, the ECB would lose £34m of income a year. ECB chief executive David Collier says that 40 per cent of professional cricketers would lose their jobs. Chairman Giles Clarke says it would be “absolutely devastating” for grassroots funding. “We’re coaching 10,000 coaches in the next four years… we wouldn’t have a hope of coaching them in the future.”
But opponents of the ECB view argue that Clarke and Collier have set up a false debate; that rather than rely on inflated TV incomes to support 18 counties and 400 full-time professionals, English cricket needs to tighten up the way it does business.
“I don’t accept the ECB’s figure that 137m will go out of the game, or anything like that,” says Berry. “But you could easily reduce the annual handout to counties by half and still make it work: reduce the fixture list, get rid of 40-over cricket, play fewer Twenty20 games and reduce staff and salaries – there’s too many journeymen earning six-figures. The sums can be made to add up. Franchises might be a more radical solution – but why not try and make the 18-county system work before considering other alternatives?”

At the root of the debate is one unanswered question: what is county cricket for? Are counties there primarily to provide players for England? Or primarily to compete in tournaments that stand alone as crowd-pleasers and revenue-raisers in themselves? Of course, the answer is ‘both’ – but no-one is clear on how the two jigsaw together.
“If our chairman says publicly that we’re here to produce England players, he’ll get shot down in flames by the members and supporters,” says Jamie Clifford. “Which is fair. The supporters aren’t here to develop England players – that’s the last thing they want – they want Kent players to play for us!
“We’re there to compete, to win things. Members, supporters and sponsors want to be associated with success.”
The wages of county players have risen over the last decade to the point where the economic viability of the average county wage bill is questionable. Yet that rise has not been wholly driven by the Sky money: counties were already receiving as much as £1.3m a year each from the ECB a decade ago.
Which isn’t to say that the counties shouldn’t keep their own house in better order and become less reliant on that central handout. Wage bills have nearly doubled over the last decade and there is
no doubt that counties could become
leaner operations. For most counties, the ECB handout represents somewhere between 33 and 50 per cent of their annual income; roughly speaking, it tends largely to go straight back out of the door on
player salaries. County wage bills start at £800,000 (Northants, Derbyshire) and go up
to £1.8m (Durham) – and the pinnacle of £2.2m (Surrey). Kent – No 8 on the list – spent £1.5m in 2008. Kent spend 33 per cent of their income on player and coach salaries; Surrey and Glamorgan – Test grounds –
just 9 per cent.
“There should be a wholesale drop in player salaries,” says one insider. “The gap between a star player who tops the run lists for a county and the salary for a squad player who only plays a handful of first-team games is not as great as people would expect. Can the English game afford fringe squad players even at small counties to be taking £50,000 a year out of the game in wages alone?”
So, when David Collier says 40 per cent of professionals would lose their jobs, critics may ask 1) how secure the future of the game can be when it is so reliant not just on one source of income, TV money, but one particular partner within that sector. And 2) Would it necessarily be a bad thing for the game if there were 40 per cent fewer professionals? Australia, after all, only has six professional teams, closely integrated with a very competitive amateur game. And if county cricket in its current form is so valued, why are there little over 100,000 county members across all 18 clubs?
“The argument is about the fabric of the game and what you need to constitute a meaningful sport,” says Jamie Clifford. “You don’t want to become like hockey: it’s played to a high level, but you’d barely know about it and that’s the danger for cricket. Six professional teams? I don’t think it would work in this country: I think we’re quite regional, even parochial. I think you need a critical mass of the game at a professional level to ensure that the game is taken seriously.”

Could the money the ECB says is needed to underwrite the future of the game come from sources other than Sky? Some already does. Over the period 2009-2013, English cricket will receive £37.3m basic funding from Sport England – or £7.5m per year. This is more than any other sport receives. The ECB itself gives £1m a year to Chance to Shine but the rest of the campaign’s £4m annual spend comes from a mix of private fundraising and government support.
To complicate the debate further, Lottery funding tends to be dependent on a sport that already has its house in order, grass roots wise. It is no coincidence that cricket should receive more money than other sports: from NatWest Cricketforce to Asda Kwik Cricket to the Sky Sports Coach Education Programme, the ECB has put in place a series of big, high profile, sponsored schemes designed to improve the grass roots of the game – not to mention that £1m that goes to Chance to Shine.
Sky’s money is not the sole provider for cricket development. But, in a declining market in which fundraising has become harder, would the ECB not be foolish to willingly give up a partner happy to put down serious money? The TV deal starting in 2010 is, after all, worth 27 per cent more than the one that started in 2006.
The ECB is hopeful that ESPN might even jolly Sky along when the rights come to be renegotiated: the American network established a ‘Classic’ channel in 2006, featuring archive BBC cricket footage and has, this season, been paying £2m a game for live Premiership football rights. ESPN already do business with the ECB, as they own the rights to show England games in Asia. Whatever happens with the Ashes terrestrial debate, there is a chance that pay TV rights will be a competitive market.
English cricket was reportedly offered a 16.66 per cent stake in the Indian-run Champions League. Scyld Berry thinks that’s a red herring – “I wouldn’t criticise the ECB for not getting into bed with the BCCI or the IPL: their sums don’t seem to add up,” he says. Nonetheless, the collapse of the Stanford deal, struck up in place of a liaison with the BCCI, has, by the ECB’s account, left many of English cricket’s eggs in Sky’s – or at least pay TV’s – basket. This month the ECB’s top brass are locked in talks with the government, talks in which they insist that the vast majority of the British public should not have the right to see their sport on free-to-air television and that such exposure would indeed ruin the sport for good. It’s an unhappy and complex situation. The result of the general election, at least, may make the path ahead clearer.

From the May issue of SPIN magazine, the UK’s only independent cricket title and, not being owned by Sky like the Wisden Cricketer, the only one able to offer an independent view of the major issues facing the game. For special offers on subscriptions, click this link.